


For men must work and women must weep

by mechanonymouse



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, OF2: Grieving Widow/Her Husband Lost at Sea - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-06-16 02:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15427437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: For there's little to earn and many to keep,





	For men must work and women must weep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguefaerie (samidha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/gifts).



> This was inspired by [Fara - Three Fishers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RzgeL9CeLE)
> 
> Thank you to moonlitwaterwriting for betaing and the reassurance.

_ Three fishers went sailing out into the west _ __  
_ Out into the west as the sun went down _ __  
_ Each thought on the woman that loved him the best, and _ _  
_ __ The children stood watching them out of the town

* * *

Outside the wind howled down the alleys and rain lashed at the windows. The kitchen was filled with the smell of toasting oats and stewing fish. Although it was still early she had already lit the oil lamps against the grey gloom of the storm and the golden light flickered, casting ever moving shadows on the walls. She hummed as she flipped the hotcakes and stirred the stew, a smile playing over her mouth. Her humming kept time with the rain hitting their roof and her daughter’s tapping on the kitchen table as she tried finish her homework, while in the living room her sons played with their toy cars. The severity of the wind and murk meant that the boats would stay home tonight. When the door opened, her husband would have no plans to leave again. Her heart buzzed with anticipation of his unexpected presence, and every creak of the door caught her attention.

The door finally swung open, whipping cold wind in through the living room and making the boys squeal. With a sigh their daughter tucked her still unfinished homework away and bussed a kiss on to her cheek. 

“Do you want me to set the table or make the boys wash up, ma?” her daughter asked over the sound of her husband taking his boots off and shaking off his sowester.

“Set the table.” She said. “Let your da wrestle the boys.” She raised her voice for the last bit and heard her husband groan from the living room and the shrieks of her sons as he lifted them to  dangle one over each shoulder.

With the table set and the menfolk clean, if damp, and settled at the table, she placed a plate of hot cakes and the butter in the center of the table and dished up a rich creamy fish stew to everyone as her husband brought the table to laughter with a tale of Old Jimmy’s dog.  Her daughter followed suit, her voice rich like her father’s and with the same storyteller’s sense of timing and tone. By the time her daughter’s story of thrill-seeking cows came to an end, the boys were scraping their bowls clean with no complaints that they didn’t like mackerel. 

Their father pulled out his pipe and settled back in his chair while their daughter wrangled the boys upstairs and in to bed. She gathered the plates together and began the washing up as the sweet smell of pipe smoke filled the air, the weight of his eyes on her back and the silence comfortable.  

* * *

She cooks a thick warm stew to stick to her husband’s ribs and fill his belly over the coal fired range. Their children are playing in the street. The sounds of giggling girls, excited screaming and squealing, and the regular thump of a ball on stone waft in on the breeze through the open window. At the kitchen table her husband checks his nets and ropes. They are in perfect repair, she knows; he checks them everytime he comes back in, spends the next day repairing any damage, and then checks them meticulously again before he goes out.

The sun is lowering in the sky as she ladles stew in to four bowls, the beams passing through the windows and casting a copper halo around his head making him look so perfect it hurts her heart to look at him. He clears the ropes and nets away without her asking as she goes to the door to call the children in.

She’s nervous, as she always is, and getting more anxious as the time for him to leave comes nearer. The younger two are too young to pick up on it, but their eldest daughter picks slowly at her bowl in a way that is unusual for her. She looks so much her father, her red hair wild about her face no matter what she does and the same determined look on their faces.

Only when everyone is completely finished with the meal does he stand ready to go. She collects the dishes, and he corners her by the sink to hold her and press open mouthed kisses to her cheeks and the tip of her nose until she laughs and captures his mouth, ignoring their sons’ disgusted faces and groans. Then he leaves to the harbour with their children running along behind him, the evening sun casting shadows that make her boys look as tall as their father.

The hands that stir the pot will be red and raw from other peoples laundry and calloused from other peoples mending. The gruel she’ll cook will be thin and weak but the children won’t complain. Their stomachs will be gnawingly empty and their bodies cold. Their faces will be all sharp edges and their clothing will hang from their bodies. No matter how hard she will work there will never be enough money for coal for the fireplace and the stove, so they will huddle in the kitchen in the evenings. Their terrace house will be freezing and dark all the time. Just a single lamp will illuminate the kitchen and they will go to bed early rather than waste oil.

Fish will be a luxury, eked out over many meals and a gift from friends that she dare not take advantage of too often. Their meals will be missing a voice. The conversation will have awkward breaks and stumbles. There will be no more laughter and when her daughter clears the table she will struggle to gratefully smile as she gathers more work together. The sight of her daughters auburn hair shining copper in the oil lamp as she helps with the mending when she should be doing her homework will be a bitter reminder of her husband’s absence and of her daughter’s loss of childhood. 

* * *

_ Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower _ __  
_ They trimmed the lamps as the sun went down, and _ __  
_ They looked at the squall and they looked at the shower, and _ _  
_ __ The night-wrack came rollin' in, ragged and brown

* * *

Her husband took advantage of his nights off. He settled in to his big chair in the front room next to the fire with the newspapers and his pipe, and he puffed steadily as he worked his way through the papers he hadn’t had a chance to read, commenting dryly on the machinations of politicians and people in the big city. Their daughter took her father folding up the last of the papers as a sign that she should head to bed brushing a kiss on both of their cheeks and running up the stair on light feet that hopped over each creaking floorboard to avoid waking the boys.

__

She laid down her darning at the next convenient pause. Together, she and her husband, walked the ground floor of their terrace house doing the nighttime chores that normally she would do alone - damping the fires and making sure everything was locked up - before following their daughter upstairs to bed.

__

With the confidence of long familiarity they undressed in silence, bodies grazing against each other without arousal as they moved around their room before settling next to each other in bed. With gentle hands he reached for her and she came to him, kissing him hard to feel the scratch of stubble against her cheeks. The bed creaked loudly and there was a moan from the children’s room making them freeze. When no more noise followed they slowly, cautiously began to move again, pressing soft kisses as they explored familiar territory in the comforting gloom. Then he farted and grabbed a handful of her hair along with her breast, her knee jerked slightly too close to his balls and they collapsed into one another shaking with laughter smothered into each other’s shoulders. 

__

It was good. Not earth shattering, that would have woken the children but good and fun. Intimacy and sex had always come easily with them even when they were navigating the newness of their marriage and living alone together for the first time.

* * *

The kitchen cleaned and her children wrapped up safely in their beds, she joins the other wives of her husband’s crew mates in the lighthouse tower. As the sun sets, the sky rapidly clouds over. They trim the wicks of the lighthouse lamps and watch the rain and waves crash against the tower. With heavy hearts they leave as the lighthouse keeper arrives from his dinner.

The walk back down from the harbour to their homes is wet and windy. White horses frolic in the sea as far out as the eye can see and waves break over the harbour wall. The rain is bitterly sharp, whipping at their faces and biting in through their woolen jumpers. When their husbands left the sea was calm, a light breeze ruffling the trees and the sun shining down their heads without a hint of the cloud to come.

The rain and the wind batter the walls of her house throughout the night and she can’t sleep for fear. She sees him thrown overboard or their skif overturned and the men drowning out on the sea alone. The wind finds its way in through every draft, sending the children skittering into bed with her. Their cold feet pressing up against her legs and she feels the emptiness of the bed without her husband’s warm presence.

* * *

Her bed will be a cold expanse. Within it’s chilly embrace is the only place she will allow herself to cry; silent tears that wrack her body and stiffen her pillow with salt. When she sleeps, she will dream of better times - her husband’s warm and loving embrace, the smell of the salty sea in his hair, the rough scratch of his beard against her soft skin, and quickly hushed laughter, of stolen kisses and promises of forever - and when she awakes she will momentarily forget that he is gone. She will reach across for the warm indent of his body risen just moments before and feel only cold and the grief will crash over her again. So she won’t sleep. Late in to the night she will lie awake worrying, counting coppers in her head - will there be enough this month for food, rent and coal or will she have to beg for charity from the Seaman’s Mission and the Church again - until she falls in to an exhausted sleep, tossing and turning but too tired to dream.

On particularly cold nights, she will tuck the children in to the bed with her and rely on combined body heat to keep them alive through the night, but even that is not a comfort. This happened while her husband was alive, but once or twice a year and his heat warmed them all without trouble. After, it will be for most of the winter, and both she and the children are sharp edges of bone that knock against each other as they shiver. 

* * *

_ Three corpses lay out on the shining sand _ __  
_ In the morning gleam as the tide went down, and _ __  
_ The women were weepin' and wringin' their hands _ _  
_ __ For those who would never come back to the town

* * *

She woke second. Her husband was always a light sleeper and early riser. The dip of the bed he slept in was still warm and she could hear him using the chamber pot across the room. With a luxurious stretch into the warm part of the bed she pulled herself from the warmth and began the daily ablutions with cold water she had laid out last night, shivering as she bathed without modesty.

She left him upstairs to light the morning fires and begin the porridge. In the other room she could hear her daughter beginning to stir and her husband’s tuneless humming followed her downstairs as he carried out his morning routine. With familiar ease she lit the stove, set the porridge on before lighting the hearth all in the strange silence that follows a storm. It was a comforting silence this morning, a sign that the right decision had been made. That it had been too dangerous to go out on the boats last night. That yes, the porridge would be thinner this week, there might be gruel for dinner, she might need to find some additional work to take on but that had been necessary.

Their daughter beat her husband down the stairs. Racing ahead of the boys who had obviously barely washed when she called them down and her husband firmly turned them back around for another go at the basin. When it was just them, their daughter let her husband lift her and swing her down from the steps like she claimed she was far too old for. Two copper heads caught in the dawn light and rippling laughter so alike. Left to their own devices they were so similar, doctored their food in exactly the same way, had the same tone of voice and mannerisms, the same easy laughter and calm dispositions. It had been a blessing to have her first. She was easy to love, easy to see her husband in even when she was crying at 3am, made being a mother easy. The boys were trouble, the children her mother had wished on her. Picky, spirited, quick to anger and quick to forgive, too smart by half for the School Master’s liking. Her daughter and her husband would eat whatever was put in front of them with no complaints but lots of praise and requests for seconds when it was good. Thin watery porridge was sniffed at by the boys unless there was honey to sweeten it, which they got from her as she struggled to hide her own distaste with knowledge of its necessity.

Breakfast eaten, her husband and children collected their lunches of cold hotcakes and cheese and headed to school and to check the boat respectively leaving the washing up to her.

* * *

The morning is worse. A dreadful still morning after the vicious storm and silent. Normally the returning fishermen are preceded by the skreiching of gulls and the sound of the fish wives preparing their trade. This morning, the first streams of morning light greet her eyes in silence and she makes herself not panic. They’ve been late before, she thinks as she lights the oven and stirs thickening porridge.

Still the town is silent as the children tumble bleary eyed from their beds and stuff their faces before school. Even her boys are quiet and she has to push her daughter out the door to school. Unusually she accompanies them the two streets in the eerie quiet and meets other mothers who similarly would normally not take the time to walk their children to school. Tension and worry, tighten their faces. Reassurances that it wasn’t that bad a storm and the tales of how late the boats have come in before are shared between them but she still finds herself walking down to the harbour and then beach with her husband’s crewmates wives just to check.

To see if they can see any of the boats out on the horizon or if the harbour master has word from any other harbours. The wreckage is immediately recognisable as a boat and to her at least one of the bodies. The morning sun sparkles copper of her husband’s hair, it tears at her heart to see him still. The departing tide still pulls at their legs trying to drag them back out to the water grave that has rejected them. She hears an animal like scream and isn’t sure if it’s her or one of the other women. Frantically she runs to him, tries to shake him awake to bring life back to the cold blue flesh in front of her so different from the warm pink man who had kissed her just twelve hours prior.

* * *

She will wake before the dawn, that isn’t new nor is the cold the seeps in to her bones as she steps from her bed. The dragging weariness and nagging sadness will be new, as will the aching cold deep in her bones before she rises. Her clothes will be worn thin and carefully darned, not capable of keeping out the drafts anymore but any spare money will go to clothing the children.

Down in the kitchen she will open the shutters, sacrificing heat for the meager dawn light so she doesn’t have to light the lamp and light the stove as efficiently as possible by feel more than sight. She will put half the number of oats she wants to in to the pot and and water the milk down until it’s translucent. Stir the thin gruel until it finally concedes to thicken and, drink a bowlful of water and then dump the bowl in to the sink. “I’ve already eaten.” She will say, ignoring the way her stomach twists on itself. “I’m not very hungry.” Her daughter will say as she takes the smallest bowl making sure her younger brothers get more. They will both know the other’s lie and it will twist and hurt places deep inside she didn’t know existed before he died that she can’t feed their family. “I’m full.” Her sons will say and she will know that is as much a lie as any she or her daughter have told.

She will leave before the children, trusting her daughter to wash the dishes, extinguish the stove, and get her brothers safely to school, while she looks for casual work gutting or packing fish of the trawlers. If there isn’t work there she will look for hours mending nets or walk in land to see if there is work cutting peat or weeding the fields. If she can not find work she will walk on weary feet to the Seaman’s Mission where she will beg for coppers to buy food for the children with a bone deep resignation that this will not get better, all her tomorrows will be the same until her sons can join the trawler crews and she will dread that day.


End file.
